Stephen E. Bacher wrote concerning Mike Leghorn paraphrasing of my post:

>>Interesting subject: "Mahler's most perfect symphonies".  Dave [Lampson]
>>chose 1, 5, 6, 7, 9.
>
>Most interesting is that it omits precisely the ones that have singing
>in them.

Yes, most interesting that.

>Wonder what Dave thinks about the 10th.

What exists of the tenth, I like quite a bit.  Had he been able to finish
it, I suspect it may well have been among my favorite symphonies.

Bernard Chasan wrote:

>The word "perfect" is completely inapplicable to any of the Mahler
>symphonies which are messy mercurial and patched together because human
>experience is messy and mercurial and patched together.

Or, more likely, "messy and mercurial and patched together" simply
because Mahler wrote them that way.  I assume Bernard missed my original
post.  I certainly never meant to imply that these symphonies were
perfect.  (And even so, can't they be perfectly "messy and mercurial and
patched together"?) I wrote that I considered them perfect "as is" in
the context of this discussion of movement order.  Meaning I've not had
the inclination to try and reorder or in any way edit the movements of
these symphonies to make them more effective.

Dave
http://www.classical.net/